It is well known that a significant percentage of a person's body heat is radiated through his or her head. For this reason, among others such as style, hats of various forms are worn by persons to protect themselves from radiant and convection heat loss when the ambient temperature is to varying degrees lower than the comfort temperature. In environments where the apparent temperature (the ambient temperature in addition to factors such as humidity and wind speed) is much below the comfort temperature, it is desirable to wear a hat that has maximum head and facial covering portions. These hats, generally referred to as face masks, beneficially protect most of a person's head, leaving exposed only the person's eyes.
A limitation to this design, however, is that the user must either wear the mask or not use it at all. In response to this limitation, certain manufacturers of cold weather apparel designed a combination hat and mask: the article resembled a knit type hat, but had stored in the inner head portion thereof a mask portion that could be folded out and extended about the user's face. An example of this type of article is shown in FIG. 1. This design, however, did little to protect the user's neck. And if a neck portion were incorporated into the mask portion, one could not just use the neck portion.
It is of course possible to wear a scarf or neck tube in conjunction with a hat or face mask, however, storage of one, the other, or both may oftentimes be undesirable. It is therefore desirable to have a single apparel head accessory that can function as a hat, a face mask, and a neck tube in various user defined combinations.